Turkey's flora

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Turkey as a Gene Center

Anatolia is one of the foremost world sources
of plants which have been cultivated for food, and the wild ancestors of
many plants which now provide staples for mankind still grow here.

Wild forms develop defense mechanisms against predators, extremes of
temperature, flooding, frost and drought. Moreover,
they are resistant to the diseases so prevalent among cultivated plants.
In addition, they preserve the taste, fragrance, color, hardness and other
original characteristics which tend to be lost in the course of cultivation.
Today thanks to strides made in biotechnology it is possible to transmit
useful qualities of this kind to their cultivars. Moreover, wild forms
are a fundamental reference source for the development of new cultivars.
To put it metaphorically, wild forms of cultivated species are like the
national archive of a country, or the core memory of a computer.

According to the principal international organizations active in wildlife
research and conservation-the International Union for the Conservation
of Nature (I-UCN), the International Plant Genetic Resource Institute (IPGRI)
and the World Wildlife Found, there are four gene centers in the world
for cultivated plants used in agriculture. Two of these are in the American
continent and two in Asia. In America, Mexico is the gene centre for maize
and tomatoes, and Peru for potatoes and beans, while in Asia China is the
gene centre for rice and millet, and the region of southwest Asia covering
most of Turkey and parts of Iran, Iraq. Syria
and Azerbaijan for wheat and barley. The most important of these strategic
agricultural plants is undoubtedly wheat, of which over thirty wild species
still grow in Turkey. The transmission of a disease-resistant
gene from a wild wheat form in Turkey to the American
cultivar has meant a saving of 50 million dollars a year for the US
economy alone.

Turkey is also the home of many other cultivated
plants, such as chickpeas, lentils, apricots, almonds, figs, hazelnuts,
cherries and sour cherries. Their origin is recorded in the Latin names
for some of these species, such as Ficus caria, meaning "fig of Caria".
Caria
was an archaic civilization of Anatolia in the
southern Aegean region. Similarly the cherry's
scientific name Cerasus comes from the ancient name of its place of origin,
today the province of Giresun on Turkey's
Black
Sea coast.

Off the large number of ornamental flowers cultivated from Turkish wild
forms, we can cite the tulip, crocus, snowdrop, lily and
fritillary.

As the flora, Turkey is divided into 3 main
division and 5 subdivisions, these are;

Turkey's Fauna

The diversity of fauna in Turkey is even greater
than that of wild plants. While the number of species throughout Europe
as a whole is around 60,000, in Turkey they number
over 80,000. If subspecies are also counted, then this number rises to
over a hundred thousand.

As in the case of plants, Anatolia is the
original homeland of several species. For instance, the fallow deer now
common in Europe was introduced from Turkey in
the 17th century. This species comes from the foothills of the
Taurus Mountains
between Antalya and Adana.
Another example is the pheasant which comes from Samsun
on Turkey's Black
Sea coast. The scientific name of this beautiful bird is Phasianus
colchicus, "Phasianus" being the ancient name for the Kizilirmak river,
and "colchicus" deriving from Colhia, an ancient kingdom which stretched
along the Black Sea coast to the Caucasus.
The domestic sheep is a descendant of the wild sheep, Ovis musimon anatolica,
which as the scientific name indicates was a native of Anatolia.
Few people are aware that the Anatolia leopard
is one of the largest of these graceful cats, and that it was the species
used in gladiator fights by the Romans constructed as traps for these creatures
can still be seen scattered in the Taurus Mountains, and are known locally
as tiger-traps. Indeed, the tiger is another creature whose original homeland
was Anatolia, a little known fact reflected
in the name tiger itself , which comes from the Latin name Felis Tigris,
or Tigris cat after the Tigris river. The lions which survive only in Hittite
statues today were once another member of the Anatolian
fauna.

Birds have taken advantage of Turkey's strategic
position as a bridge connecting Europe to Asia and Africa for thousands
of years. Two of the four main migration routes in the bio-geographic region
known as the year, in spring and autumn. In spring migratory birds fly
northwards from Africa to Asia and Europe, and in autumn they leave their
breeding grounds to fly south to Africa again. One of these migration routes
leads south from Hopa in northeast Turkey along the Çoruh river
valley into Eastern Anatolia, passing through
Kahramanmaras
and Antakya in Southeast Turkey. Most of the birds
which take this route through the Çoruh River valley are birds of
prey, and at around 250,000 they from the largest migratory group of birds
of prey in the world. However, the most spectacular migration in the world
is the flight of storks down the Bosphorus in
Istanbul in spring and autumn. Over a quarter
million storks fly in clouds over the city in the course of a few weeks.
Some species of birds of prey also migrate along the Bosphorus,
a waterway which is not only migratory route for birds but also for fish
making their way between the Black Sea and the
Marmara Sea. It is this phenomenon
which results in unusually high catches, delighting fishermen and their
customers alike.

Despite the fact that Turkey is an ancient land,
crossed, exploited and sought over by a succession of peoples for millennia,
there are still many areas which have remained virtually untouched, enabling
many rare species of wildlife which have become endangered or extinct elsewhere
to maintain viable colonies here. Turkey's Aegean
and Mediterranean shores provide a refuge
for monk seals and loggerhead turtles, while is wetlands house colonies
of numerous endangered species, such as the Dalmatian pelican, pygmy cormorant
and the slender billed curlew, as well as flamingoes, wild ducks and geese.

Under the auspices of the Ministry of the Environment a
program is
underway to project the last surviving colonies of monk seal along Turkey's
Mediterranean
and Aegean coasts, and in addition an international
project is being conducted within the framework of the Bern and Barcelona
conventions. Apart from a small colony of monk seals on the shores of the
Western Sahara on the Atlantic Ocean, the only remaining colonies of this
species are the eastern Mediterranean, the species having been wiped out
in the western areas. The fact that the species has survived along Turkey's
shores is due to the preservation of the natural environment in many areas
and low pollution levels. Further evidence that environmental conservation
along
Turkey's coast is succeeding is the continued
existence of pine forest and long un-spoilt beaches despite extensive construction
in recent years. Seals are seen to a lesser extent in the
Marmara and Black
Sea, but they are most common around Foça, near Izmir,
on the Aegean coast, a town whose name derives
from the ancient Phoenician for seal. A local Seal Committee has beer set
up in the town, followed by another at Yalikavak near Bodrum
further to the south.

Other endangered species include turtles which lay their eggs in the
long sandy beaches of the Mediterranean. Two species breed in Turkey,
where efforts to protect them have been extremely successful. A tourism
development project at Köycegiz has
been scrapped to preserve the breeding grounds of Caretta Caretta, and
the lake and marshes of Köycegiz
declared an Specially Protected Area. These measures were received with
a standing ovation by the Standing Committee of Bern Convention of the
Council of Europe in 1989, and cited as an example for other countries
to follow. Studies of the turtles along all Turkey's
shores have been launched, and seventeen sand beaches of foremost importance
as breeding grounds for turtles are kept under constant observation by
the Turtle Preservation Committee. The Ministry of the Environment's Authority
of Specially Protected Areas is in charge of protecting the Belek area,
and the Ministry of Forestry is responsible for the Yumurtalik and Akyatan
wetlands.